Paris Peace Conf. 180.035/4b: Telegram
The Commission to Negotiate Peace to the Secretary of State
4244. Confidential. For the President and Secretary of State [from Polk]. As stated in my 4216, September 15, 3 p.m., Lloyd George told me at dinner Friday night that he thought the Conference should be dissolved. I pointed out to him then and also in our interview on Saturday that it is out of the question to dissolve until the Bulgarian and Hungarian treaties are disposed of. I also mentioned Galicia, the Adriatic, Greek and Roumanian minority treaties, eastern frontier of Poland, Dobruja, Silesia and the Roumanian question as matters that would have to receive attention before we could talk of adjourning. I pointed out that the dissolution of the Council would be thoroughly misunderstood by the smaller European powers and that just because he did not have a cabinet officer available there was no reason, in our minds, why the British Government should undertake, on such short notice, to announce the dissolution. I told him that I knew the official British press representatives had given out a report that Lloyd George was here to close up the Conference. This he denied.
At our meeting on Monday98 all the other powers insisted that we should wind up pending matters before discussing dissolution and Lloyd George agreed to appoint Eyre Crowe Plenipotentiary to represent Great Britain. I told Lloyd George on Tuesday morning just before he left that we rather resented this attempt on his part to create the impression that the Council was all through, not only because it was not a fact, but also because it was discourteous to the United States representatives to have the matter handled the way it [Page 647] had been. He tried to assure me that we misunderstood his position, but again spoke of our dissolving in ten days after pending matters are cleared up. I told him it was absolutely out of the question to dissolve until the Bulgarian and Hungarian treaties had been concluded. British Press representatives tell me that Lloyd George gave this impression in order to protect himself from attack in the House of Commons as the expenses of the Peace Conference have been criticized. Polk.
- See HD–53, minutes 4 and 7, vol. viii, pp. 203 and 209.↩